Supreme Court Gives Obamacare Opponents Biggest Legal Victory Yet

Moments ago the US Supreme Court - the same Supreme Court which two years ago upheld Obamacare but as a tax, something the administration has since sternly denied - dealt Obamacare its biggest legal blow to date, and alternatively handing Obamacare opponents their largest court victory yet, when in a 5-4 vote SCOTUS ruled that business owners can object on religious grounds to a provision of President Barack Obama's healthcare law that requires closely held private companies to provide health insurance that covers birth control.

As Reuters notes, the justices ruled for the first time that for-profit companies can make claims under a 1993 federal law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). One of the two cases was brought by arts-and-crafts retailer Hobby Lobby Stores Ltd, which is owned and operated by David and Barbara Green and their children, who are evangelical Christians. The other case was brought by Norman and Elizabeth Hahn, Mennonites who own Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp in Pennsylvania. The justices said that such companies can seek an exemption from the so-called birth control mandate. The decision, which applies only to companies owned by a small number of individuals, means employees of those companies will have to obtain certain forms of birth control from other sources.

As expected, the Supreme Court, which is nothing but a gaggle of political activists, voted along ideological lines. As Reuters reports, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissenting opinion on behalf of the liberal wing of the court.

"In a decision of startling breadth, the court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law ... they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs," she wrote.

Americans, clearly having nothing better to worry about, promptly made their way to the SCOTUS building:

Hundreds of demonstrators on both side of one of the most contentious cases of the Supreme Court term converged on the court building, wearing costumes, chanting and carrying signs. Some demonstrators chanted, "Keep your boardroom out of my bedroom" and "Separate church and state, women must decide their fate." Signs carried by demonstrators offered contrasting views: "Obamacare - religious liberty First Amendment outlawed," "I am the pro-life generation," and "Birth control not my boss's business." One man dressed up as a copy of the Bible, brandishing a sign saying, "Use me not for your bigotry."

But while the impact on US healthcare from this ruling will be modest, the real consequence will be in Washington, where as Politico writes, "So much for the Obamacare comeback."

Just when the health care law seemed to be in a better place, with a big finish to the enrollment season and the early embarrassments fading into the background, the Supreme Court handed Obamacare’s opponents their biggest legal victory yet.

The contraception coverage mandate isn’t central to the law, the way the individual mandate is. By letting some closely held employers — like family-owned businesses — opt out of the coverage if they have religious objections, the justices haven’t blown a hole in the law that unravels its ability to cover millions of Americans. They didn’t even overturn the contraception coverage rule itself. They just carved out an exemption for some employers from one benefit, one that wasn’t even spelled out when the law was passed.

But politically, that doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the Supreme Court has ruled that the Obama administration overreached on one of the most sensitive cultural controversies in modern politics. And in doing so, the justices have given the Affordable Care Act one more setback that it didn’t need heading into the mid-term elections.

“This will remind people why they don’t like the ACA to begin with,” said Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway. “People do not believe that a president, no matter what party they’re from, should be overbearing or intrusive into their religious practices.”

Republican ad maker Brad Todd put it bluntly: “Anytime Obamacare is in the news, it’s a good thing for Republicans.”

The ruling also allows Republicans to say that Obama and his law have violated one of the most respected constitutional protections: freedom of religion.

“They’ve overreached, and they’ve overreached in an area that’s very sacred,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List.

That's great. However, it presupposes that Americans still care about such trivial items as freedom (of any kind). And, of course, the Constitution. Both are up for debate.

"The state — or, to make matters more concrete, the government — consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting ‘A’ to satisfy ‘B’. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods." - H.L. Mencken

“Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free. “- H.L. Mencken

“I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air—that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. . . .In any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct to side with the citizen . . . I am against all efforts to make men virtuous by law.” - H.L. Mencken

Why should a shareholder's religious beliefs trump the employees'? Additionally, aren't corporations supposed to be artificial persons seperate from the shareholders? This ruling eviscerates corporate law and employees' religious rights.

And find a new job, in the middle of our current dedepression, isn't a serious answer.

this is a meaningless bone thrown to the masses... if anything, this is yet another back door way to equate corporations with humans... corporations are fictional... just another cog in the usury machine that is our current world.

SCOTUS asked if we can provide alternatives to religious non-profits why can't HHS do the same for for-profits. This means Obama works around the ruling by using the same tracks built to accommodate baby-killers working for religious non-profits.

We want leftist women to not reproduce, but we ask them to do so on their own fucking dime. Bareback fucking is a privately made choice. Getting pregnant from doing so indicates a healthy body, not a disease condition. If someone needs the pill to make their cycle more comfortable, that is again a choice, and the cost of it is very low. Much lower than cheap cell phone plan or a.single tank of gas. There is no need for "insurance" against an expense of such trifling size. Insurance is for lower probability treatments of far higher cost.

I find the #RightToWater protests in Detroit an example of how socialists are willing to make other people be their slaves.

Detroit is right on a river/lake with water to be collected for free, but that's not good enough for them, they want purified water delivered to their house without paying for it, (because it is a right). This purification and delivery would require equipment and people. I don't think there are many people that have their life's goal to work for free in a municipal water department. But the socialists are willing to force someone to do it for free, making them, in effect, slaves.

If we are doing musician metaphors, I'd say he is more like the pied piper. He is playing the cloward and piven marching music, right off the cliff. He intends to destroy the USA a fast as he can get away with it. He's very active and willing, not just fiddling in some corner.

Is Hobby Lobby a 501(c)? So next up they can try to go around and fire employees that are not Christian, and argue that discrimination thing. This is a slippery slope.

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

To clarify -- this ruling is so narrow that it is essentially useless, except maybe a small nominal victory for freedom from an overbearing gov't and maybe a black eye to the administration.

"The principal dissent raises the possibility that discrimination in hiring, for example on the basis of race, might be cloaked as religious practice to escape legal sanction. See post, at 32–33. Our decision today provides no such shield. The Government has a compelling interest in providing an equal opportunity to participate in the work force without regard to race, and prohibitions on racial discrimination are precisely tailored to achieve that critical goal."

Yea! I saw the Sunday inside the beltway talking head douchebags discussing this and they all thought certainly the USSC would vote in favor of Obungler, the only debate was if it would be 9-0 or there might be 1 dissenter for an 8-1.....they must be all 'OMG WTF' today.

I bit my lip and watched MSNBC for 5 minutes to see what the statists were saying. The meme now is that this is good for Hillary because the electorate will now want a POTUS who appoints more progressive justices. Bwahahahahahahaha!!!

Fixed. I don't really like using the term "liberal" because it was hijacked by progressives. Plus I've been re-reading some of Mises and Hayek and I like how in their time libertarians were still considered liberals and today's "liberals" were still called progressives. ;)

In Canada the Provinces will pay for Birth Control Pills IF you reach a deductible co-pay amount based on family income. (You need to be below the poverty line before you would ever get them covered...or on an expensive chronic med. to bring you up to your deductible.) Private insurance 95% of the time does NOT pay for Birth Control. And it's just never even been an issue here???? Maybe because nobody is forcing the Private companies to do anything...thus the term Private.

Pregnancies are indeed supposed to result from bareback fucking. That's indicative of a healthy woman. Infertility is a disease, in either sex, and often is costly to treat. Viagra, where indicated to treat male infertility, is pretty goddamned cheap. Birth control pills do not treat infertility. They cause it.

The Pill costs about 30-60 dollars a month --which is a helluva lot cheaper than having a child. You can get free, full-size sample packs from your doctor's office if that's too expensive, as I did for four years when uninsured. You can also get free or reduced-price contraceptives from Planned Parenthood, and if you're a student you can get supplies from your student health center.

There are ways around this, if you know how to work the system. I guess too many people think that, if you can't get it through insured health care, you can't get it at all.

A private, independant OB-GYN could make this available for a few dollars a month, but now hes held hostage, with 10's of thousands of .gov employees, pushing paper left and right, and well, somebody has to pay...

Give everybody the abortion pill, an abortion, and the birth control pill.... oops we need people... OPEN the friggin borders and send welcome brochures to Mexico and southward. Put on it "just get here and we will give you a ticket to fly anywhere you want all life services included.

The issue at hand is not about whether it is cheaper to supply contraception or to pay for the baby.

The core issue is whether people are forced to subsidize h0rs. If some women want to be h0rs, that's great. It's a free country and they can do as they wish. If they want me to pay so that they CAN be h0rs, then of course that isn't freedom, it just means I'm paying for people other than me to have sex and I'm somehow getting fvked in the process.

It should cost society very little. But progressives make it cost society a lot, and then use that argument to push for yet more social engineering, atop the social engineering that increased the problems to begin with. Take LBJ's Great Society, please. Or Kennedy's 1965 immigration reform. Or socialised medicine justifying Nanny rules about about private behavior. Etc.

Too bad that two years ago Roberts didn't add to his majority opinion that, BTW because the mandate is a tax, the ACA is motherfucking REVENUE BILL, which makes the entire thing null and void, game over, buh-bye: Revenue bills must originate in the House. The entirety of the text comes from the Senate, including even the title. The only thing preserved from the stub house bill it was overwritten upon was the number.

I would not be surprised if the supreme court passes a law that gives corporations the power to determine their employees sexual partners...and how often they are allowed to fuck.

Do you even have the ability to form a coherent thought?

Tell me more about how corporations force people to work for them, because in my world if a company doesn't offer what I want, I don't work for it. And if it's the only job I can find I'm not going to be picky.

Doesn't seem too much of a stretch to say if these companies can cut coverage for birth control for religous reasons then they could also refuse to employ/promote anyone who is gay/lesbian/trans etc. and avoid any kind of anti-discrimination prosecution using the same argument.

it's a bad law, with many many problems, anyone want to bet the liberal left will ignore this ruling? or add a band aid like .gov free bc pills to one and all thus removing the cost to business and putting it on us tax payers who have no say in how taxes and our debt are spent. .gov is not getting smaller by this ruling.